Forestry and Fishing

Forestlands constituted approximately one-third of Paraguay's total
area. Utilized for fuelwoods, timber exports, and extracts, the
country's wooded areas constituted a key economic resource.
Approximately half of all woodlands contained commercially valuable
timber. In the 1980s about 4 million hectares were being lumbered
commercially. Forestry data was only a broad estimate, however, as a
full third of timber production was believed to be exported illegally to
Brazil. Registered forestry exports accounted for about 8 percent of
total exports during most of the 1980s. Forests have played an important
role in the economy since the 1800s with the processing of yerba maté
and the resilient quebracho. Because of a general decline in tannin
exports, however, the quebracho played a correspondingly less important
role in forestry.

Officially, Paraguay produced over 1 million cubic meters of lumber a
year in the 1980s. Trees were processed at over 150 small, mostly
outdated sawmills that produced wood products for the paper, cardboard,
construction, and furniture industries and for export. Trees also fueled
the country's railroad and largest steel mill. The country's woodlands
contained over forty-five species of wood suitable for export, but fewer
than ten species were exported in quantity. Paraguay was recognized as
an exporter of fine timber, and its wood exports were internationally
competitive. In 1987 lumber exports to Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico
earned US$50 million in foreign exchange.

Despite the abundance of premium forests, deforestation was
progressing at an alarming rate, about 150,000 to 200,000 hectares per
year. The rapid depletion of Paraguay's woods was caused by the clearing
of virgin forests associated with agricultural colonization, the farming
practice of land-clearing and treeburning , and the felling of trees for
charcoal and the other fuelwoods that accounted for 80 percent of
household energy consumption.

Although the country contained enormous installed energy capacity,
fuelwood remained the most important domestic source of energy in the
1980s. In fact, Paraguay's per capita consumption of fuelwood was the
highest in all of Latin America and the Caribbean and nearly three times
the level of other South American countries. The deforestation question
was complicated by the distribution of forestlands and population.
Southeast Paraguay was being deforested the most rapidly. From the
mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, that region's forestland decreased from just
under 45 percent of all land to 30 percent. The Chaco maintained a large
number of forestlands and shrubs, but they could not be economically
exploited.

Government policy was slow to respond to deforestation because of the
traditional abundance of forests as well as the generally laissez-faire
dynamics of the land colonization process. In 1973 the government
established a National Forestry Service under the Ministry of
Agriculture and Livestock to protect, conserve, and expand the country's
forests. The service, however, was hindered by a lack of resources,
staff, serious government initiatives, and public education on the
problem of deforestation. The planting of fast-growing trees and
modernization of the lumber industry were recommended by the government,
but only about 7,000 hectares of new forests were seeded annually in the
mid-1980s. Given these levels of deforestation and reforestation,
analysts estimated that few commercial lumbering lands would be
available by the year 2020.

For landlocked Paraguay, fishing was only a minor industry. It
focused on more than 230 freshwater fish species in the country's rivers
and streams. Only fifty or so species of fish were eaten, dorado and pacú
being the most popular. Some fishing companies, mostly family
operations, maintained boats, refrigeration facilities, and marketing
outlets.